If you could take a simple blood test and find out if you
were likely to die within the next five years, would you? You may have that
option soon under a new "death test" developed by scientists in Finland and
Estonia.

The test, reported on by the Telegraph, predicts the chances
a person has of dying from a medical condition. It uses four biological markers
that indicate the risk of dying from a disease within a five-year period, even
if the person is not ill at the time.

As part of the test, blood samples were taken from 17,000
generally healthy participants. Those samples were screened for more than a
hundred different biomolecules and their health was monitored for the next five
years. Of those participants, 684 died during that period from a range of
illnesses, including cancer and heart disease.

Scientists said all of those who died had similar levels of
four of the biomarkers. One in five
participants with the highest biomarker scores died within the first year of
the study.

"What is especially interesting is that these biomarkers
reflect the risk for dying from very different types of diseases such as heart
disease or cancer. They seem to be signs of a general frailty in the body,"
said Dr. Johannes Kettunen of the Institute for Molecular Medicine in Finland.

The researchers hope the information can be used in the
future to help prevent the illnesses before they occur.

"We believe that in the future these measures can be used to
identify people who appear healthy but in fact have serious underlying
illnesses and guide them to proper treatment," Kettunen said.